Bureaucratic Manoeuvres: The Contested Administration of the Unemployed

"Grundy’s patient empiricism could be put to good use in classrooms to critically explore with students the circulation of particular orientations or sensibilities through institutions and cultures over time, and to bring home the importance of taking a long view on where we are within longer histories of problematization and intervention. The readability of the book also recommends it for classroom use. Overall, Bureaucratic Manoeuvers makes an important and interesting contribution to social and employment policy and related studies in the Canadian context, and to comparative policy studies more broadly. I highly recommend it."

Tina Wilson, Critical Social Policy

"Bureaucratic Manoeuvres is an excellent piece of empirical scholarship. It is original and pushes discussions of employment insurance in new directions."

Peter Graefe, Department of Political Science, McMaster University

"Bureaucratic Manoeuvres is thorough and rich in material. Grundy’s primary archival research is unmatched by most scholars working in the field today."

Michelle Brady, School of Social Science, University of Queensland

"Bureaucratic Manoeuvres is an important contribution for anyone interested in governance, the working conditions of front-line staff, and the disjunction between how policy is conceived and enacted, making it useful for political scientists, sociologists and scholars of public administration. Grundy has crafted a sophisticated, yet succinct argument about the contested nature of governing the unemployed in the pages of Bureaucratic Manoeuvres, which has much to offer both within and beyond the Canadian context"

Laura Anne Hickman, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham